PC game service admits to serving up Bitcoin-mining malware

Users of popular PC gaming service ESEA have discovered that their PCs have been hijacked to mine Bitcoins by malware served up alongside the company’s client. A hidden Bitcoin-mining process caused users’ graphics cards to overheat as it worked in the background.

“In the past two days I’ve noticed when my computer was idle, my GPU usage was hovering 90%+ with temps in the high 60s low 70s (hot for my card),” he wrote in a post on the company forums. “Turns out for the past 2 days, my computer has been farming bitcoins for someone in the ESEA community.”

The attack has earned $3,602 for the unknown attackers, and has been running since April 14th, the company admitted.

The company initially dismissed the incident as an April Fool’s joke gone wrong. But in a later post, co-founder Eric Thunberg admitted that “this is way more shady than I originally thought.”

What transpired the past two weeks is a case of an employee acting on his own and without authorization to access our community through our company’s resources. We are extremely disappointed and concerned by the unauthorized actions of this unauthorized individual.

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In an effort to maintain complete transparency, we have released all of the Bitcoin wallet addresses as well as data dumps of the wallets themselves. The value of the mined Bitcoins was $3,713.55 and ESEA will be donating 100% of the $3,713.55 to the American Cancer Society. ESEA will also match 100% of this amount for a total of $7,427.10 donated. ESEA is also increasing the Season 14 League prize pot by $3,713.55.